Porous silver containing chemically combined sulfur (e.g., as silver sulfate, silver sulfide, etc.) is useful as a catalyst (as for hydrodesulfurization of petroleum oils) or as an electrode in a battery utilizing a sulfur system (e.g., sulfur-lithium).
Known prior art processes for producing high porosity silver articles containing chemically combined sulfur are generally expensive and inefficient, since they require a high purity (e.g., 99.9%) porous silver as a starting material. Prior art methods for producing porous silver articles are shown for example in U.S. Pat. No. 3,052,967 to Fischer.
It is therefore one general object of the present invention to provide a method of producing an article of porous silver containing chemically combined sulfur and which is less expensive and more efficient (e.g., less manual handling) than processes used for this purpose to date.
It is a more specific object of this invention to provide a process for producing a porous silver containing chemically combined sulfur in conjunction with a process for recovering silver, in ultra pure form (e.g., 99.9%) from silver sulfide, mixtures of silver with sulfur, or silver sulfide with zinc. Such a mixture occurs as the precipitate in spent photographic hypo solutions when zinc powder is added to precipitate silver.